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I think I know what's being said here... If you just enter into google the name of a restaurant you're interested in, the first results will usually be the actual restaurant website, followed by whatever, followed by (as far as reviews go) the yelp page.

However, on the right side of the page (if the search is made via google) is a tab featuring the average star review from Google. I originally was confused into thinking that was a summary of the Yelp star average, and it's not. The google results are almost always higher ratings than Yelp.

So, in a way, yes, Google does spotlight their review system for restaurants in a more visible way upon a google search, it just presents them in a separate area from the search results.

I just Googled a VERY popular restaurant up the street in Chicago's wealthy North Shore.

The top hit was an Open Table link to the restaurant's Open Table page.

The second hit was the restaurant's page.

The third hit was the restaurant's menu.

The fourth hit was Open Table's ratings.

The fifth hit was Trip Adviser's ratings.

The SIXTH hit was Yelp.

On the RIGHT was the standard Google ad with information, including hours, pictures, and the Google reviews (which CLEARLY states "Google reviews")

The order of the hits is based on popularity, with the exception of the PAID AD at the very top (Open Table) which has "AD" inside of a box indicating it's an ad.

The difference between Yelp reviewers and Google reviewers are important to note. Anthony Bourdain FUCKING HATED YELP REVIEWERS.

Yelp reviews aren't fair, in and of themselves. Your Yelp review isn't even SHOWN until you reach that stupid elite level of reviewing, and I frequently see THE STUPIDEST FUCKING RESTAURANT REVIEWS on Yelp. 3 Star Michelin restaurant Alinea, for instance, given 1 Yelp star and terrible reviews for being "too expensive" and "not having any vegan options." I tend to consider Open Table reviews more seriously than Yelp, and Google reviews more seriously than Yelp. And I'm totally guilty of Instagramming my meals from restaurants.

At any rate, Google isn't unfair to restaurants, it's just providing information and it WILL take down hostile reviews. One ASSHOLE was providing TERRIBLE reviews about my marina; this guy went on EVERY LOCAL MARINA site and blasted our marina. I told the manager at our marina about it, and asked about this guy. He said the guy wasn't even a customer, he was a boat surveyor who showed up 5 minutes before closing and was a jerk. Our marina manager told Google about it and POOF, these terrible reviews that this guy was SPAMMING all over Google disappeared. Good luck getting Yelp to bring down someone who's trying to destroy you on Yelp to do anything. You have to sue to do it.

totally agreed there... Yelp is fucking poison. I remember reading a review for one of my favorite sushi spots, and the person in the review bitched about how they weren't allowed to just walk in without a reservation. They didn't even see, let alone try the fucking food.

The only time Yelp intervenes is when Sarah Huckabee Sanders is kicked out by the restaurant owners and they get flooded with hate spam. (see, I made this post political in the end, somehow

A good plan for society is not "become the richest man in the world, eat up all of the competition, and then go bankrupt and retire and leave everything burning."

Amazon is many things and one of them is a tech company. Alexa, Kindle, FireTV, the Amazon phone they tried to sell for a while: those are tech things. They're also an online retailer, but when you invent little surveillance devices that tell you what the weather is on Tuesday based on your voice command and your product is more well-known in the zeitgeist than Siri and Google, you're a tech company.

And before you edited a lot of your post away, I do want to make sure the point isn't lost that Warren is not calling on any of these companies to change their business model and services - she's calling on regulation to prevent rubber stamping mergers left and right in the tech world and to unwind some of these deals that have made the internet and small businesses worse off. Feasible or not, she's starting a debate on a passive outlook similar to the Fed's passive outlook on bank mergers. We'd be wise to take a step back and consider the price we pay for convenience in more than just currency.

I'm a bank manager for a mid-size bank that works closely with small businesses to get them growing and stay profitable, so this does hit close to home for me.

@ltrandazzo
, I come from a family of small business owners. Some of our best friends are small business owners. One of them, a staunch “Libertarian” and Trump supporter, constantly bitches about Google and about how it’s a “monopoly” and that it’s “unfair.” What my DAD (who owned a printing company for most of my life) used to say is: “It costs money to make money.” I was in advertising and marketing for many years. This Libertarian Trump friend, who owns a house painting business, is NOT tech savvy, won’t pay anyone to make him a web site, optimize it for Google, let alone get on fucking Angie’s List or give people a discount for a Google review. He living in the 50s. Meanwhile, my friend the self-employed consultant is making 6 figures optimizing companies’ web sites, etc.

You can sit and whine about the unfairness, or you can get on board and find a way to use it to your advantage. Use Amazon Marketplace’s HUGE connection to targeted audiences plus its built-in security to market your product. Use Google’s relatively cheap rates to reach your audience.

Advertising and marketing and distribution is expensive. Plain old brick and mortar retail is no longer a viable model.

We need to be very careful limiting invention and progress. Amazon is bringing DOWN prices. They’re now delving onto the prescription drug market. Yes, Bezos is too fucking rich and should spread the wealth and pay more taxes. But, so should Apple.

I agree that we need to limit mergers. We should have been doing that many years ago. But limiting mergers won’t prevent buyouts without mergers.

Meanwhile, this will never pass the Senate.

What I wish would be the focus in the 2020 are the people in Congress who drag their feet in demanding that healthcare costs and drug costs be lowered. No “stern warning” bullshit but actual legislation that would force these healthcare providers and drug companies to lower prices to an affordable rate, and SHOW US all Congresspeople who aren’t on board so we can PROTEST THEM RELENTLESSLY AND GET RID OF THEM.

I don't think she "gets" a lot of what's going on. First, Amazon isn't "tech." It's retail. It just happens to be online retail. Which she doesn't seem to understand.

Actually, Amazon is more of a tech company than anything else. While to the average consumer, Amazon is just a digital storefront, almost all of their operating income comes from AWS. Similarly to Google essentially being an advertising platform that uses their ad revenue to fund their other projects, Amazon is a web services company that uses their services' profits to fund their other projects.

AWS was one of the very first cloud computing services, and is to this day the most popular cloud computing service in the world, with virtually every tech company on Earth either using them in some way, or trying to catch up to them. Its popularity literally helped save their digital storefront from going out of business in 2002. So not only are they tech, they are one of the biggest tech giants in the world. Even Microsoft and Google have been unable to compete with them.

Basically what I'm saying is that she totally gets it. Or, at least someone in her campaign does.

Actually, Amazon is more of a tech company than anything else. While to the average consumer, Amazon is just a digital storefront, almost all of their operating income comes from AWS.

All their income is from AWS??? Seriously???

So retail is just a fun side project?

With all those HUGE distribution centers???

Still, she isn’t talking about AWS. She wants Amazon Basic and Amazon Marketplace split off from Amazon, as well as Whole Foods.

I specialized in Corporate Law for many years, as did Warren. I’m just trying to see what she’s getting at, here. It’s NOT just antitrust. It’s marketing, trying to “protect the little guy.” Except the little guy is using these services?

I like Warren, she specialized in bankruptcy law, she knows her stuff. But I’m confused by this one.

I think it WAS the loss-leader brand establishing foot in the door originally. For the longest time, despite the ubiquitousness and dominance of the online marketplace, Amazon was (to the best of my recollection) still losing money for a long, long time.

Kinda like Spotify in a way... it's a HUGE company, they are THE name in free streaming music, but they're not profitable... yet... until they reveal some next step in the business model beyond that. Isn't Uber even still reporting losses?

Every time I've ever talked about this with someone outside of the tech industry it always gets a big surprise. It's not that their retail stuff isn't important to them, it's just not their main source of money. AWS actually provided all of their operating income in 2017. It's pretty incredible how successful they've been with it. But yeah, just like you said, it's similar to YouTube and Google. Retail is their most well known venture, but AWS is their most successful.

Every time I've ever talked about this with someone outside of the tech industry it always gets a big surprise. It's not that their retail stuff isn't important to them, it's just not their main source of money. AWS actually provided all of their operating income in 2017. It's pretty incredible how successful they've been with it. But yeah, just like you said, it's similar to YouTube and Google. Retail is their most well known venture, but AWS is their most successful.

AWS is nearly pure profit. So, it would, of course, be intended to pump cash into the inventory side of the e-commerce business. But that doesn’t mean that AWS generates the most business, overall. Nor does it mean that Amazon’s e-commerce is operating at a loss. Amazon’s commerce is rolled into its overall commerce which include Whole Foods. Inventory costs money. Whole Foods could end up being a failed experiment.

But Amazon is a publicly traded company. It has to show earnings to its shareholders in its quarterly reports to not lose those shareholders and to sell more shares and to gain share value. So it needs at least some portion of the business that is highly profitable with little to no inventory or warehouse or delivery costs.

I did, and only one of them outright contradicts what I said. The digitalcommerce link says that half of their operating income was from AWS, but in the same sentence claims to be talking about net income, which is different. Meanwhile the venturebeat article says that AWS is their biggest seller, but also separates it's numbers into sales and subscriptions, both of which are provided by AWS, but only gives the figures on the sales side. The visualcapitalist article you just posted backs the operating income stat that I quoted, but then gives a pie chart that is net revenue, which doesn't take into account any expenses. I'm not saying any of these articles is right or wrong, but all four report different figures, and some even seem to mix up terminology. That said, the thing that all of them do support is that AWS is the star of the show right now, whether that means that it's their biggest overall money maker, the major source of their operating income, or their fastest growing division, all of which are supported by at least one of these articles. So forget the exact figures, the spirit of my post was that Amazon is a tech company, and all of these articles at least support that.

The model begins like this: A company that is successful in one area turns itself into a conglomerate by using its free cash flow to finance the development or acquisition of businesses in other areas — at first, ones that are similar to their current business, and later often ones that are farther afield. And then the company does this again and again.

Bezos looks at Amazon as three separate entities that support each other, through various growth phases.

Amazon is a fucking massive gorilla of a company that’s been in a constant growth and acquisition phase, all the while remaining hugely profitable. It’s nuts. They’re into advertising, AI, investing, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, all KINDS of shit.

CEO Jeff Bezos says Amazon rests on the three pillars of Amazon Prime, Amazon Web Services, and Marketplace, and the company’s acquisition strategy is designed to support each.

Nearly 40 of Amazon’s 2017 patents were focused on developing its cloud computing systems, while the company also filed over 30 patents focused on improving its logistics network.

Acquiring Whole Foods for $13.7B last year shows acquisitions are evaluated on the potential Amazon has to scale up transactions and scale down prices drastically.

Amazon accounts for about 4% of all retail and about 44% of all e-commerce spending in the U.S.

You’re right that technology supports and drives a lot of Amazon. But the part that Warren wants to split up is the e-commerce part.

She wants to force them to divide Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Basic and Amazon. And I don’t even know how that would be possible, they’re SO integrated. But I suppose Bezos could figure it out. And game the system.

“You can be an umpire — a platform — or you can own teams. That’s fine. But you can’t be an umpire and own one of the teams that’s in the game. Break those things apart and we will have a much more competitive, robust market in America. That’s how capitalism should work.”

ALL of which is why NO STATE SHOULD GIVE AMAZON ANY TAX INCENTIVES!!!!

[quote]“We should not be doing anything to mess with the strength of the filibuster,” says Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).

Most senator candidates are with Booker. Bernie Sanders says he’s “not crazy about getting rid of the filibuster.” His plan for Senate reform is statehood for the District of Columbia, which he thinks can get done because “I hope my Republican colleagues do the right thing.”

Kamala Harris is “conflicted.” And Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is concerned about the risks to being in the minority. “Having just lived through being in the minority,” she explains, “I just want to think long and hard about it.”

Non-senators, by contrast, are more inclined to agree with Warren. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is all for scrapping it, as is Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.[/url]

It’s very hard to create big new programs, but once they’re in place, they are hard to take away. There is, for example, vociferous disagreement about the political viability of a Big Bang switch away from the current US health insurance patchwork to a uniform single-payer system. But nobody thinks that if a single-payer system existed, it would be remotely viable to try to switch back to the current pastiche. Similarly, if you passed a law making it easier to form labor unions, that would lead to more unionized workers, which would make it harder to pass new anti-union laws.

Also, see attempts at hurting labor unions in red states like Missouri (still pains me to type that) in 2018 - they didn't pass and "Right to Work" legislation all failed in their state government. Teachers unions are striking and getting pay raises across the country. When you pass sweeping reform and install an institution like the ACA, it makes it harder to repeal, especially as more people become dependent on it.

Anyway, read more in the piece. And, remember this - we have a lot of candidates declaring who aren't making policy proposals or opening bids on things (unlike Warren and breaking up Amazon). As time goes on, campaigns who don't stand out above their peers tend to have lower polling numbers, and those presidential hopefuls turn into VP hopefuls or campaign surrogates come Summer 2020.

My updated Way-Too-Early Top Picks -

1. Elizabeth Warren - she's still firing shots and is making the rounds. I consider her tech company proposal a conversation starter and one we should be having, even if her goals appear unrealistic. Her honestly around trying to pass legislation is also going to keep her peers honest moving forward.
2. Mayor Pete - Look, the guy has been blowing up out of the gate and is starting to raise his profile, especially after a great showing this past weekend on a CNN town hall with Jake Tapper. He has the best summary out of the gate as well (paraphrasing) - "I have more legislative experience than Trump, more executive experience than Pence, and more military experience than both combined." His conversations are backing that up as well.
3. Bernie Sanders - He's polling well from the start and he can claim OG credentials for single payer and other progressive proposals. He has to do more in other areas of inclusion.
4. Kamala Harris - I need policy proposals or something. Tweets from the 2008 Obama playbook won't do anything now.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the company originally removed the ad because it violated Facebook's prohibition against modifying its corporate logo. The ad includes Facebook's "f" trademark surrounded by a comic-book dialog bubble. It also includes icons to represent Amazon and Google.

A Sanders/Beto (with Beto as VP) would absolutely destroy Trump. Yet, somehow, I am pretty sure the Democrats will cook up something much riskier and sell it through the primaries. Whatever though... they’d have to come up with something truly insane to lose my vote in 2020

I like the old-guard/new-blood Dem ticket. Sanders is much more revolutionary than your typical Democrat, but fuck it, this is the party that's ostensibly progressive, so let's act like it I guess. Having a young, progressive, inspiring option like Beto as VP gets rid of the issue of Sanders' age. Seriously, this cannot lose. The whole map would turn blue.

I like the old-guard/new-blood Dem ticket. Sanders is much more revolutionary than your typical Democrat, but fuck it, this is the party that's ostensibly progressive, so let's act like it I guess. Having a young, progressive, inspiring option like Beto as VP gets rid of the issue of Sanders' age. Seriously, this cannot lose. The whole map would turn blue.

And... on that note, Beto just announced he's running.

I don't know. I'm afraid of Bernie being perceived as TOO radical for some Democratic voters.
I'm not sure he's out best chance at getting rid of Captain Asshole.

I don't know. I'm afraid of Bernie being perceived as TOO radical for some Democratic voters.
I'm not sure he's out best chance at getting rid of Captain Asshole.

When you really want to evaluate who is a good bet, take a look at who the other side is flailing to demonize. They're scared of Beto, it's why that whole disingenuous scandal blew up framing him as anti-BLM happened. They're scared of AOC... and they're scared of Sanders, because he's kind of a rallying point for a lot of these ideas getting traction.

The only people who would be scared away are centrists-in-name-only, and that is not a group large enough to really care about. The youth vote tradeoff would be far more powerful in the end. Anyone who is honest about how they're an independent moderate is champing at the bit to vote Trump out of office.

EDIT: and now Trump is weighing in, saying that Beto's "hand movement" is "crazy."
Uh... dude... what's next? Are you going to bash him for his comb-over hair, or say he's got a big fat ass, or that his face is too orange? Maybe he says "tremendous" too much? Is his tie too long? Maybe he dances around like a muppet when the Arby's theme song comes on?

The President is the chief of the Executive Branch, the Commander in Chief of the Military, the face of the country, who deals with foreign policy, the state department, national security and national emergencies, NATO, and appointment of Federal judges and SCOTUS justices, etc.

When we view a Presidential candidate, we shouldn’t think creating laws. That’s up to Congress. We should think enforcement of laws, judicial and global.

Wikipedia is succinct:

The president is the head of the executive branch of the federal government and is constitutionally obligated to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed". The executive branch has over four million employees, including members of the military.

When we view a Presidential candidate, we shouldn’t think laws or local. That’s up to Congress. We should think legal, global and judicial.

I feel like we should *also* be thinking laws though. They may be up to Congress, but having a president who will publicize and push for certain legislation is far more likely to get Congress to act on it than otherwise. Take decriminalizing marijuana as an example. On their own, Congress doesn't seem to have any real motivation to do much there. But put in a president who will stir the pot (sorry - really not an intended pun) and I firmly believe that the chances of new legislation being created rises drastically.

I feel like we should *also* be thinking laws though. They may be up to Congress, but having a president who will publicize and push for certain legislation is far more likely to get Congress to act on it than otherwise. Take decriminalizing marijuana as an example. On their own, Congress doesn't seem to have any real motivation to do much there. But put in a president who will stir the pot (sorry - really not an intended pun) and I firmly believe that the chances of new legislation being created rises drastically.

I respectfully disagree.

Barack Obama promised, in 2008, to get rid of the Patriot Act and to close Gitmo. These never happened.

The Senate will likely still be a Republican majority in 2020 for two more years. And, even not, Congress largely votes NOT by what their constituents want or what the President recommends but what lobbyists tell them, or what won’t risk their own ass.

Eventually, marijuana will be Federally legalized. But, first, it will likely go through a process of decriminalization, in steps.

The recent prison reform bill was one such step.

When a majority of states decriminalize or legalize marijuana, the Federal government will likely pass legislation.

If NOT, it’s likely that a lawsuit related to IRS small business credits etc. will go as far as SCOTUS.

Now, there ARE ways that having ANY Democrat in the Executive works.

In Illinois, for example, many pieces of legislation were prepared by the Democratic-majority legislative body but were vetoed by former (Republican) Governor Bruce Rauner. (Democrat) Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been in office less than two months and he’s already started signing these formerly-dead pieces of legislation into law.

Some major pieces of legislation in the Democratic House in D.C. are dead-in-the-water NOW (HR-1).

But if ANY Democrat wins the Presidency and if the House maintains its Democratic majority, and some weird thing happens where they can get some Republicans on board in the Senate or if (pray) the Democrats somehow flip the Senate (only likely if there is another economic crash ... which many are predicting), then it's likely that most of that dead legislation gets signed / rubber stamped.

Eventually, marijuana will be Federally legalized. But, first, it will likely go through a process of decriminalization, in steps.

And this is the correct way that it should be done so that cases can be made to vacate harsh, long-term sentences currently being served by non-violent drug offenders and to prevent these from happening in the future. Rich white people constantly photograph themselves with gigantic bags of weed in their dispensaries while poor white people and all people of color usually get thrown into jail for 5-7 years (sometimes longer) for selling a dime bag.

Obama would also be the first to say that campaigning on hope and change and then turning that into policy ended up being much harder to do than he and his administration realized. The ACA was written to be conservative (it was based on the model Mitt Romney implemented in Mass. to win Republican votes after consulting with McConnell and Boehner). And remember this, we were one vote away from having a public option in the ACA until insurance lobbyists leaned on Joe Lieberman and got him come out against it.

However, Lieberman was outweighed by other courageous politicians who took the chance to vote for the ACA and ended up losing their seats as a result, so an argument can be made to do the right thing, maybe lose out in the immediate term but potentially gain in the longer term. One could also argue that our current House on average is more liberal than in recent terms, and that a potential Senate win would yield a similar result. It's not to say that passing progressive legislation would be smooth, but the odds would increase dramatically.

The ACA is DEFINITELY a watered-down version of what the voters wanted, what put Obama in office. Then it was amended (gutted) by allowing states to reject the Medicaid expansion. And insurance companies fucked it up with plain old GREED. And the ACA contains very few cost-reduction mandates, as promised. Because so many in Congress are so deeply imbedded in healthcare stocks.

So all that resulted in the Democrats losing their control of Congress in 2010 due to the Tea Party movement.

But, it also resulted in the Democrats winning BACK the House!

The Republicans still haven’t gotten RID of the ACA, because voters don’t want to go backward.

And I wouldn’t say this is more “liberal.”

I think most voters are just so fucking sick of the high cost of healthcare and health insurance, the idea of reducing costs for both is actually MAINSTREAM.

Voters just want a REALISTIC plan that won’t fuck them over. Even Republican voters want this. This is no longer radical.

The insurance industry forcing us all to carry the very best plan (with maternity coverage when you’re 55) without mandating the vast reduction of costs only lines the pockets of both the healthcare stock holders and board trustees as well as those in the insurance industry.

Get rid of primary health insurance companies, pay our premiums directly to Medicare, cut out the middle man, cut out profit, pay only for supplemental insurance if necessary, this stuff sounds “radical”’ until it’s explained with charts etc.

Consider what your employers and you pay to the insurance companies in premiums and deductibles and copays every year. We revise the whole mess by providing an amended list of (REDUCED) reasonable and acceptable costs to healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies; the government then becomes the primary payer, and charges each person and his/her employer a monthly premium which would be lower than before; and we ELIMINATE THE FICA CAP which would pay for the whole thing. But, yeah, Congress would have to do all of this.

I'm going to regret posting this, and it's super unreasonable for me to feel the way I do about it because I don't know any of the people involved personally, but...

Splinter News can fuck right off getting all upset that Rosario Dawson, noted Bernie '16 supporter, is now in a relationship with Cory Booker - someone who the average Bernie supported likely doesn't care for. Take your dumbass "GIRL WYD" article and fuck off forever with that.